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GEORGE LYNCH

INTERVIEW BY MARKO SYRJÄLÄ

George Lynch is one of the most popular and influential guitarists to emerge from the ’80s-era heavy metal/hard rock scene. Lynch is best known for his work with platinum sellers Dokken whose albums UNDER LOCK AND KEY and BACK FOR THE ATTACK went to platinum in the mid 80’s. In 1988 Don Dokken and Lynch found it impossible to continue in the same band together and as a result the band broke up. Don Dokken decided to start his solo career whereas Lynch decided to form a new band called Lynch Mob. Joining Lynch in the new outfit was singer Oni Logan, bassist Anthony Esposito, and former Dokken colleague Mick Brown. The band issued their debut album, WICKED SENSATION, in 1990. WICKED SENSATION became another milestone in Lynch’s career and it did went gold in States with over 500 000 copies sold. The sophomore album LYNCH MOB presented a new lead singer Robert Mason and it was released in 1992. The second album failed to reach its predecessors success and soon band was disbanded. Lynch released a solo album called SACRED GROOVE in 1993 with various famous guests including Glenn Hughes, Ray Gillen and Mandy Lion before rejoining Dokken in 1994. The reunited band released two studio albums: DYSFUNCTIONAL and SHADOWLIFE before Lynch decided to leave again. The late ’90s/early 21st century saw Lynch alternate between issuing albums with the Lynch Mob (with varying members) and as a solo artist resulting in such further titles as 1999’s SMOKE THIS, 2003’s WICKED UNDERGROUND and FURIOUS GEORGE in 2004. In 2010 it was officially announced that Oni Logan and Lynch will rejoin their forces again and as a result SMOKE AND MIRRORS was released in 2009. The world followed and in late 2010 the renewed band; Lynch, Logan, bassist Robbie Crane and drummer Brian Tichy finally arrived in Scandinavia. In Gothenburg in Sweden I had chance to sit down Mr. Lynch himself and talk about various topics including the reunion with Logan, Souls of We, the past as well as a possible Dokken reunion… read on…

EUROPEAN TOUR AND NEW LINE UP

First of all, you guys have been on tour in Europe for a while already. How are things going with this new line up?

Well, there are two sides to this particular European experience with Lynch Mob. The positive side is the band. I love this band; I love the guys in it and the music we can make, and the potential music we could make. It’s that touring, in all practical sense, very difficult. It’s probably the most difficult tour I’ve ever done, including when we first started out, you know, in the 70s and 80s, when things were very rough. We were younger then and could bounce back. It’s a lot of mismanagement on this tour. It’s been very, very rough. But despite that, you know, I think we’ve only had one show that was a disappointment, and that was because we had a 17 hour drive that day and got hassled at the border and then got lost in the city. The drivers only new Bulgarian and didn’t know how to speak any other language. We couldn’t communicate, they had no GPS, you know, things like that, no sound check, drive up and drive up 10 minutes before we’re supposed to play and played on a boat in the Danube, and where was that… hmmm in Hungary, Budapest. It was not a great show.

You have a really tight schedule, I just checked the dates and you guys have been doing something like 25 shows in 30 days?

Yeah, it’s pretty ridiculous, but it’s the travel part. That’s why I always say, people don’t pay us to play, people pay us to get there.

Like you just mentioned, the positive thing here is the new line up. Do you think that it’s going to be more stable than some previous ones?

That’s impossible for me to tell. Brian Tichy on drums, Robbie Crane on bass, Oni Logan and I, and Tichy is already leaving in April, between April and November I believe for Whitesnake. So, but I hope to get him back after that. Which means we will have to replace him this year, or next year, for most of the year unfortunately? And it breaks my heart because I love playing with him. But it is what it is, so, and you can’t blame him, you know, Whitesnake is a great opportunity for him, so I’m happy for him. So, but yeah, I’m trying like crazy with all my abilities, the best of my abilities, to keep this version of Lynch Mob intact. So, Robbie is dedicated to staying in the band. Of course, Oni and myself. We’ll hopefully take a break from Brian for a while this year, but hopefully he’ll come back. We’ll see, but it’s kind of disappointing. We are really trying to engineer things so this band can sort of elevate itself in status. Unfortunately, we haven’t been out touring and making records like we should have for many, many years, so we have to sort of..

Rebuild your career?

Rebuild, yeah.

George, Oni Logan, Brian Tichy and Robbie Crane

THE STATE OF ONI LOGAN

What’s the situation with Oni Logan now? I mean, he’s been on and off from this band and lately you used other vocalists in the U.S but now Oni has done the whole European tour, so what’s his status in the band at the moment?

I know he is… he’s going through some personal stuff and he had to come back to Switzerland to deal with those things, and we had to work, so we had dates that we couldn’t cancel, so we went to Canada and then we did some… we did a tour in Canada and then some dates in the States that we used a couple of different singers for, one being Marq Torien from the Bulletboys, the other Keith St. John from Montrose. Which are, they’re both great, but they’re not Oni, so?

So Oni is the lead singer of Lynch Mob from now on?

Yeah, Oni is back.

Okay, that’s good to know because there are lots of rumors flying around about anything and everything and…

Truth, yes, truth is always a good thing to know.

Actually, you and Oni are… you have a long history together? How you actually kind of re-connected now after so many years and, when you tried to to work together in the late 90s, why it didn’t work out then?

Yeah, the mistake we made in the 90’s is that instead of doing a new record, we went right out, the agent convinced us to go right out and tour. And it was not an easy tour, so you know, tours can be band busters, you know, and band killers, and it was, it was a tough tour. We had Jimmy D’Anda from Bulletboys on drums and Chuck Carrick on bass, it was a good band, but we ended up disbanding after the tour because Oni got back together with Rowan Robertson as he did in Dio’s demise originally and they started working together again, so there went Lynch Mob. So I don’t know, I guess it was kind of a false start. But this one has more staying power this time because he’s really decided in his mind, he’s committed to it. And we’ve gone through a lot of obstacles in the last three or four years we’ve been back together, so if he’s endured all this then he’s around for the long haul I feel, and so I’m pretty, if he’s dedicated, I’m dedicated.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

Let’s talk a little bit about your latest album SMOKE AND MIRRORS. First of all, you have done so many different things in between but I would say that SMOKE AND MIRRORS kind of brings you back to your hard rock roots in a way?

Well, playing with Oni, I mean, I play a certain way with Oni, we write a certain way, and you know it just sort of happens. We don’t really think about it because I know what works for him and what he expects and you know, where he lives and I mean, I have the same roots as him in the 70’s and we both love that music so we don’t even have to, sort of unspoken reality of our chemistry is that’s what it is, it’s blues based hard rock with a little evil twist sometimes, and that’s about it, that’s how I write for that.

Right, another thing that’s easy to hear on new album is that there are certainly some influences and elements from Southern stuff there like some Skynyrd type of stuff. Do you agree with that?

Yeah, a little bit like the “Smoke and Mirrors” title track. Originally we were… I’d been on this kick to do kind of a Southern rock thing, so when first started writing that’s what we were writing. But then, once we started writing more, we decided, you know what, that’s not what we are. It was a little too mellow. So we stepped it up a little bit in intensity and not so Southern, but it has that, there’s some of that flavor, yeah absolutely.

George and Oni live at Gothemburg 2010

THE EARLY LYNCH MOB

Okay, actually going back to the early days of Lynch Mob, when Dokken split up in 1988, was it an obvious choice that you were going to start a new band or did you ever think to start just to be a guitar hero in the vein of Yngwie or somebody else like him?

No, I never wanted to be like that. I assumed and always talked to Jeff and Mick about starting our own band after Dokken, and that’s what we’d always talked about so, that’s what I thought was going to happen. And then Jeff went off and started his own band, which I thought was very curious, I didn’t understand that.

Was that the War and Peace thing?

Yeah, it was that. And so I was like, well, I guess he just, he never called me, and I asked him, and said, well I want to do this so. Okay, so then I go okay well I’ll start another band then. And then I put all my energies into finding what I thought would be my ideal band, and I had the luxury of taking my time and picking what I thought were the, hand picking the right members, and it was a great time, it was a great record, and a great experience, those couple or few years, first few years of Lynch Mob, because we knocked it out of the park, you know, did a great record.

The first album WICKED SENSATION went Gold (sales wise) in the States right?

It went Gold in the States, and then the second record only sold half of that.

Yeah, but the early 90’s was bad timing for hard rock music anyway I would say.

It was bad timing for us to do that kind of record on the second record. We should have done a record similar to WICKED SENSATION, and we should have done it with Oni. So whatever, hindsight is 20/20 (laughs).

When you started working on the second album, LYNCH MOB, you first worked with Glenn Hughes at that point, right?

Yeah. He was supposed to be the vocal coach, or whatever. Robert doesn’t need a vocal coach, but we didn’t know Robert, so we thought oh we should have Glenn Hughes. But Glenn Hughes wasn’t doing anything. We were paying him, but he was just kind of not doing a lot, so I said, “well dude if you’re sitting here doing nothing, why don’t you sing on some songs?” so he did. It was amazing. And I immediately said Okay, I want, if you want to do this, I would rather have you in the band and said bye-bye to Robert and told the record company, it sounded unbelievable, and so I went to the producer and told him that, and the producer said, no, no way. And I think he was lying to me, but he said that he destroyed the tapes. Because what he didn’t want to do was rock the boat for him, because he wanted to get paid and didn’t want any complications. But, it’s not his… well it ended up being his decision, and I shouldn’t have allowed that.

That could have been really interesting line up for Lynch Mob. But what I have learned, Glenn always wanted to play bass as well when he’s in the band and that could have been a problem there?

I could have fired Anthony. That would have worked out pretty good. Three piece, split the money three ways instead of four.

Some sources do mention that are still some of Glenn’s vocal parts used on the album but without credit. Do you think that’s true?

His voice is probably on there somewhere, some little stuff, but not anything that is probably hugely noticeable.

The original Lynch Mob in 1989: Mick Brown, Oni Logan, George and Anthony Esposito

SACRED GROOVE AND SMOKE THIS

A few years later, when you did the SACRED GROOVE album, you worked again with Glenn, right?

Glenn sang on two songs and co-wrote those as well.

Besides Glenn, there are some other really interesting vocalists on that album as well like Ray Gillen? That album must have been one of his very last recording sessions he ever did?

He sang after that with a band in New York, some guy that was paying him, he was working in Electric Ladyland studios when I last saw him and it wasn’t so good, but, I really wanted Ray. Ray was my first choice for Lynch Mob. But he wouldn’t leave Badlands, which I respect that. Ray, and I totally honor that he loved his band and was committed to his band and so, and then when I saw him again at Electric Ladyland studios, he said that he regretted that decision and wished he hadn’t done the record and so on… You know, Oni was always a huge Glenn Hughes fan, and so modeled himself after Glenn Hughes and Ray Gillen when he was younger, his voice range, his range was higher.

Ray Gillen, was that in ’89 when you first asked him to join in the band?

Well it was when we were, yeah, there were a couple of times that I asked him, before even forming the group, and then when we were recording, and then also again when he was in the studio with me doing SACRED GROOVE, I asked him.

How was his health back in the days, in 1993?

He looked fine, and I think he was okay then, I don’t know if he was sick or not, but he didn’t look sick, didn’t act sick. That was ’90.

How did the Nelson Brothers end up on the album?

Oh, when I did that record, I had my A list, my short list of guys that I wanted to use, who I talked to all of them, Phil Anselmo, the singer from Alice in Chains, you know all these great guys. Halford had agreed to do it. And in the 11th hour, at the last minute, they’re all like “Oh, I’m too busy, and on tour, I can’t” and so I had to get… Don Dokken was also supposed to do it and I went down to his studio, we wrote a song, then he just, we waited in the studio for two days, he never showed up. That was kind of fucked up so, I had to find other people that were…

Available…?

Yeah, at last minute, so, Mandy Lion was last minute, Nelson Brothers, I got the Nelson Brothers because I thought, well, that’s the closest thing I can think to Don because they’re kind of melodic and that kind of thing. But now that I listen back to record, it’s Ray Gillen, it was great, Glenn Hughes was great, my favorites. Jeff Pilson originally sang “Flesh and Blood”, which Ray later re-sang. And Jeff really wanted to be on that song, but when put his vocal back to back with Ray’s, I mean Jeff is great, he was great, but how many people can compete with Ray Gillen, I mean, he’s the best. I should have had Ray sing the whole damn record.

Why you didn’t call SACRED GROOVE a Lynch Mob album?

Well the Lynch Mob, it was different drummer, different bass player, different style, you know?

But then several years later you released album SMOKE THIS which it was a completely new band and you were the only remaining member of the original band then?

Well, that was because, I had no intentions of calling the Lynch Mob, but again, in the 11th hour, at the last minute, the record company Koch, said oh by the way, you have to call it Lynch Mob.

Okay.

Why, it’s not Lynch Mob, and they go because you have to, it’s the only way we’re going to sell any records. If you don’t call it Lynch Mob, nobody will know what it is, and we won’t sell any records, so what am I supposed to say?

So it was meant to be more like your solo album?

Not solo, no, just a band name like it would have been something else, but not Lynch Mob.

How do you like that album now afterward?

Actually I would have called it Lynch Bizkit “laughs”

Alright “laughs”

That would have been inappropriate but I love the record. I loved doing it, I mean, I have a lot of great memories from doing that record. It was not well received, obviously, but I mean I thought it was, I mean there were parts of it that were, I wanted to be strange sometimes, but some of it was maybe too strange. Not strange in a progressive sense, but just like what kind of music is this. But, you know, so what, it’s just music, it’s not like we’re hurting anybody, and they got so pissed off like I did something bad you know, it was just playing music you know.

THE LATE 90’S STUFF

How much you were listening “new” bands of that time?

Which bands? … Well, I like Papa Roach, I like Limp Bizkit. I think the guitar player is interesting.

With that album, how well you managed to reach new fans whose were also fans of those bands you just mentioned and how your old fans did reacted SMOKE THIS back then?

No, I mean, nobody comes to see me play that kind of music. So everybody that was there was there to see me play what I’m known for, so you know we started the tour playing just the new SMOKE THIS record, and couldn’t get away, people were just demanding, and everything, so we were like, we better throw in some other stuff. So what we did was we did like some Dokken material and some other stuff, but we would rework it till it fit our style. So the “Kiss of Death” to a totally different beat, you know, or half time, a little funkier, I loved that band, and the singer was great. Bass player, Gabe Rosalis, was fantastic. He was 19 at the time, and he now plays with all kinds of famous people like Jennifer Lopez and just Vegas.

So he’s making some real money now?

He’s done phenomenal, but he’s a synced in person, just a beautiful guy, wonderful, the whole band was so much fun. And then, later on we added the guitar player from Flotsam & Jetsam, two guitar players, just for the touring.

In 2003 you decided to re-record some of your older stuff and…

You’re talking about REVOLUTION?

Yeah. Why you decided to do that album at that time? It was also quite shocking for some old fans for sure?

You wouldn’t to play just exactly the same. I mean I was all into my baritone guitar at that time, and my LTD baritone, so trying to just, I thought well, just re-invent the songs, do this best of Dokken or whatever, I think we did Lynch Mob songs too, I’m pretty sure. It was all tuned down and it was a different sound, and we went to tape which was interesting, I like going to tape. I thought it was cool so I mean it was done at Henson Recording studios, which is the old A&M studios in Hollywood, where I had a production room for two years. So it was kind of my home, you know, for a lot of years, and surrounded by great producers like Bob Ezrin and John Shanks and all of these just super famous producers that were in rooms around me so, I was surrounded by amazing talent, and the bands that were coming there, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, and Kiss, and Ozzy, and Aerosmith, and everybody was in there all the time, it was just a phenomenal place to be. So I had a home there for a while and we did that record there, which was, we also did the LYNCNH /PILSON album there. And what else did I do there, I did a record that I produced for this Australian girl named Michelle Joan Smith, it was great, kind of punky, but commercial and no guitar solos, very commercial.

Was it some kind of pop stuff?

Yeah, but not pop, it wasn’t happy, it was kind of sort of slightly melancholy, but pop, not pop, but commercial, I mean, it had big hooks. But it was beautiful music, but the business side of it didn’t go so good, but the music came out great, but never got released. I spent a lot of time on that. Then I had another band in there called Band of Flakes, BOF, with Jason Slater from Snake River Conspiracy, and Scott Coogan, and it’s a really cool band, but everybody was on drugs and so fucked up and just crazy, nobody would ever show up. So we wrote some great songs, it was like six or seven songs, sort of, a little but Alice in Chains, but it was really cool and dirty, and everybody just kind of floated away.

You just worked again with Scott on SMOKE ON MIRRORS album. Why he’s not in the band anymore?

Well, Scott is a kind of crazy. I love Scott, but… he was in Lynch Mob and he played in this SMOKE AND MIRRORS record. He actually played a show with us recently in L.A just because Brian couldn’t make the show. I like him, but I don’t think I could work with him anymore, it’s just too much. But, see I played with London LeGrand before London was in Brides of Destruction, we had another band that was kind of like garage Korn, like Korn, kind of really nasty, but with R&B elements. It was cool. It was fucking great, and it was just, I don’t know?

That must have been somewhere in the middle of the 90s or something?

It’s not even, you know what, there is one song that made it on a record called Lynch Anthology or something, and it was called “Bulldog Tyranny”. That’s one song, it’s not the best song, but it’s one of the songs from that group.

It’s on some kind of compilation or something?

It’s a compilation with Deadline records. I think it’s called LOST LYNCH ANTHOLOGY or something like that? There are a lot of material that was left over from those previous projects kind of got reworked and, Souls of We was really a five year process, because after Bank of Flakes there was another project I had which had just a funny name called West Hollywood Starfish, just to call it something, but it was like friends in the writing songs. So we put all this material together, and we used that as the basis for the new Souls of We record. And that whole process took five years, off and on, so then the Souls of We record, really we didn’t have a name, I didn’t have a singer, it was just writing songs with an engineer, so then through the process we finally had many drummers, we got Mike Wengren from Disturbed, Morgan from Sevendust, the drummer, I can’t remember his name from Halford’s band who played with Skid Row.

You’re talking about Bobby Jarzombek here?

Yeah and then there were two other drummers, there was Yngwie’s drummer…

Patrick Johansson.

Yeah, Johansson, he’s great, I love him. He played on it. There were a couple of others I think. Two more, the girl, I forget her name, she only has one name not a last name, what’s her name? No, she’s on the album cover, was she on the album cover, yeah she was on the album cover, I can’t remember her name. I have a bad memory. And Johnny Chow on bass, and we had the bass player from Dragonforce also on five songs. Jeff Pilson played on it. Somebody else, I can’t remember. We had a lot of people on there. And then I was looking for the singer, and I was talking to a couple of known guys, nothing panned out, and we ended up with London, which actually ended it being pretty cool. And then, now we are almost finished with the new Souls of We record, but without London.

SOULS OF WE AND MORE

Okay so London’s out of the band Souls of We now?

The new Souls of We record, just to make things really confusing, ahh… I’m such a mess, I got three singers. And the reason that happened is because we tried London, London didn’t work out. Then we got Will Martin from Earshot, isn’t Earshot kind of like Tool, it was great, and we thought, okay, this is it, and then he left. And then we got Marq Torien from Bulletboys. And that guy’s the craziest fucker with the worst case of lead singer disease I’ve ever seen, so we got rid of his ass. And then we got Keith St. John to come in and write in a couple of songs, and so I just ended up with all these singers on the record.

Didn’t Keith play with Doug Aldrich before in Burning Rain?

Yeah he’s great, Keith is great.

So on the album there is going to be three singers?

Keith, Mark, and Will.

Okay, is there’s going to be some touring, who is going to be on tour?

I don’t know.

London?

No, London can’t sing this shit. Any one of those singers could sing any of those songs.

By the way, who’s you favorite singer on that album?

My favorite is Will, Will is my favorite.

Okay… about London, I remember when he turned Brides of Destruction, everybody said, great band, great song but he’s not the best vocalist on earth?

Live was horrible. It was one of the reasons we got rid of him, he’s just horrible.

Souls of We promoshot

THE BUSINESS SIDE

You’ve also released a bunch of solo albums which are dedicated to certain artists, musical period or other themes. Would you tell something more about for example the SCORPION TALE –album which is a kind of tribute to the Scorpions?

Well I am a fan of the Scorpions, but no that’s just work, that’s just the work side. People call me up to work, like I do a good amount of stuff in Japan that’s very well paying gigs and very professional and Marty Fredrikson and I just did some record with him, and he was Aerosmith producer, and great studio, and he paid me really well, and that part was just work, it’s my job like a plumber. They call me up, I go to your house, I charge you, and I fix your shit, you know. It was funny, this record I did though, Brian Tichy is also on it with Marty Fredrikson, this Japanese band, boy band. Not that they’re a boy band, but the track, I didn’t even listen to it, and I just went in the studio and just played. I had to do all the rhythms, I had to do all the leads, and it was like eight minutes long. It’s basically like a Joe Satriani song off SURFING WITH THE ALIEN. It’s a pretty touch song, I was like holy shit, all this tapping and everything, I’m like "Oh fuck, I don’t how to do any of this stuff?" But it ended up coming out really good. And then I did this other song called Orchestral Mayhems, this other record, have you heard it?

No.

It came out about six months ago. It’s all instrumental.

What was it called?

It’s called ORCHESTRAL MAYHEM but it’s funny because they called me up from the record company and said we’ll pay you x amount of money just to do a whole instrumental record, but we already have the music, all you have to do is play over it, and I’m like, it’s like classical sort of classical music, I’m like okay. But I think it’s royalty free classical music, it’s all public domain classical music. I figured out that later. But, yeah, so I went in and did that. And then I also did a cover of “Bittersweet Symphony”, by the Verve I think it was, and that came out pretty cool. I did that with Frank Curri in his studio. But the whole record took me 8 hours.

Yeah, that sounds a good business.

I was like, “I’m going to knock this out as fast as I can” but it ended up being very cool.

That’s a great way to make some extra…

Yeah, hopefully, fat chance of that.

… because the actual albums don’t sell too much anymore. Many bands have said that it’s almost not worth to make new albums anymore because nobody’s buying them.

That’s true.

Do you have any ideas what kind of numbers SMOKE AND MIRRORS has sold?

20,000.

20,000 in States?

20,000 worldwide. Last time I looked, which was a few months ago. But yeah, I’m embarrassed to say that…

TO DOKKEN OR NOT TO BE?

So far we have talked about Lynch Mob and your other projects but hardly a word about Dokken so I have to ask about what’s going on with Dokken re-union plans?

You know what, some people never change their spots. And what I got a feeling is happening is, Don has been making noises, and we’ve been having meetings, and we’ve been doing shows together with Lynch Mob and Souls of We, we did Loud Park in Japan together and all this stuff, and it’s like, and he said okay I’m committing to it, but we never put it on paper, and so my last few conversations with him is that, he sounds like he’s trying to get me to be a hired gun. And I told him, dude, I told you from the first moment I’ll never do that, I’m not a hired gun guy. SO I think it’s maybe not going to happen. But we, but actually the whole original band got together before we came on tour in Europe and we agreed to do a world tour in 2012.

Okay, so ever further, there were rumors that you were going to play some festivals next summer already.

I think he’s just using that to get the rumor going to increase his audience attendance and get some excitement going. And I really resent that because I’m an honorable person, 99.9 percent of the time, I try to be, and fallible like all human beings, but I mean I really, that was always my problem with him, is that he was not an honest trustful person, and I, he never said what he meant, and never did what he said. And that to me is lack of character, and I don’t like playing with people with no character. So, you know, it wasn’t even his vocal abilities, it wasn’t just hanging out talking like you and me right now, it’s all fine, everything is good, it was that, and that was all related to money. So, it’s all a bad way to conduct yourself.

So this is end of all those stupid rumors because the best ones keep on saying, yeah, half of the new album is already finished, and the next one will be finished on the spring, and then there’s world tour coming? I wonder who keeps on putting those out.

Me and Jeff got together, we wrote three new Dokken songs, and they were great, and then Don just started playing his games so, we just said fuck that and I’ve been hanging in there, but after these last few conversations I think he feels like I really need to do that so he’s going to grind me down, and I don’t need to do that. I do okay, I don’t need to be.

But like you said you do have plans for year 2012. Do you know if it’s going to be just a tour or is there going to be a new album as well?

Well we’re talking about doing an album as well, and like a two month world tour in the summer or 2012. But who knows, that’s a long way away.

Nobody knows what’s going to happen for sure, that’ understandable.

Well, the ball is in his court, but if he doesn’t play fair and doesn’t tell the truth, then no.

One last question about Dokken… can’t hesitate to ask how do you like current Dokken guitarist Jon Levin?

He’s great.

He has such same kind of style as you have.

I think that was by design. In terms of…

From note to note?

Yeah, I mean, I can’t play my stuff note for note, I mean, because when I do records, I’m just kind of make shit up in the studio, I don’t ever plan solos, except for TOOTH AND NAIL I planned it. All the other solos are improvised, so when I get done with the record, it’s mixed, we go away, months later we practice, and I forget what I played. So I’ve never sat down and tried to learn my solos, you know, note for note.

That keeps the things fresh.

It keeps things fresh for me, but the audience didn’t like that. But fuck them. No I’m just kidding “laughs”

The classic Dokken: Jeff Pilson, Don Dokken, George and Mick Brown

BITS AND PIECES

Do you other plans to cut a new, to work another LYNCH/PILSON album with Jeff at some point?

No, I can’t do any more records dude, because right now I’m working on the new Lynch Mob record too. So the Souls of We record, as I’m here, is being mixed, and I have to finish it next week, I’ve got to finish the mix, and then go right back in and work in Jeff Pilson’s studio with Jeff and Robbie and Brian and Oni and we’re writing a new Lynch Mob record. We have five songs already written. So we’re going to hopefully have that done by the beginning of 2011. And so then, I mean I can’t put out too many records because it doesn’t make sense and people will get it confused.

That’s true

We don’t want to do that.

It doesn’t make good for the sales either.

Right, but I will do an instrumental record at some point. I don’t know when. It’s going to be a pure instrumental, no singers.

I remember, I bought your album called FURIOUS GEORGE and..

Right.

On that liner notes you were saying that, you are putting out some blues based album in the future. Is that going to happen as well?

Yeah, I want to do a blues record too, but you know, that will be the last record I do. When I’m living in New Mexico in my tepee “laughs”